Featured Research

from universities, journals, and other organizations

Northern wildfires threaten runaway climate change, study reveals

Date:

December 6, 2010

Source:

University of Guelph

Summary:

A new study reveals that fires in the Alaskan interior have become more severe in the last decade, resulting in more carbon being released than is being stored. About half the world's soil carbon is locked in northern permafrost and peatland soils. The increased burning is shifting these ecosystems from a carbon sink to a carbon source.

Share This

This is an image of wildfires in the Alaskan Interior. A new study reveals that climate change is causing these fires to burn more fiercely over the last decade which has resulted in an increase in greenhouse gases being pumped into the atmosphere.

Climate change is causing wildfires to burn more fiercely, pumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than previously thought, according to a new study to be published in Nature Geoscience this week.

Related Articles

This is the first study to reveal that fires in the Alaskan interior -- an area spanning 18.5 million hectares -- have become more severe in the past 10 years, and have released much more carbon into the atmosphere than was stored by the region's forests over the same period.

"When most people think of wildfires, they think about trees burning, but most of what fuels a boreal fire is plant litter, moss and organic matter in surface soils," said University of Guelph professor Merritt Turetsky, lead author of the study.

"These findings are worrisome because about half the world's soil carbon is locked in northern permafrost and peatland soils. This is carbon that has accumulated in ecosystems a little bit at a time for thousands of years, but is being released very rapidly through increased burning."

The results of this study are important for countries currently meeting in Mexico for climate talks, added the integrative biology professor.

"Essentially this could represent a runaway climate change scenario in which warming is leading to larger and more intense fires, releasing more greenhouse gases and resulting in more warming. This cycle can be broken for a number of reasons, but likely not without dramatic changes to the boreal forest as we currently know it."

This study is part of a growing body of evidence that northern systems are bearing the brunt of climate change, said co-author Jennifer Harden, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist.

"This includes longer snow-free seasons, changes in vegetation, loss of ice and permafrost, and now fire, which is shifting these systems from a global carbon sink toward a carbon source."

The researchers visited almost 200 forest and peatland sites shortly after blazes were extinguished to measure how much biomass burnt.

"We've been chasing fires in this region for a number of years, which is how we amassed this unique data set," said Turetsky.

They also looked at fire records kept since the 1950s.

"Over the past 10 years, burned area has doubled in interior Alaska, mostly because of increased burning late in the fire season," said co-author Eric Kasischke, a University of Maryland professor. "This is the first study that has demonstrated that increases in burned area are clearly linked to increases in fire severity. This not only impacts carbon storage, but also will accelerate permafrost loss and changes in forest cover."

More severe burning also raises a number of health concerns, as fire emissions contain mercury and particulate matter that can cause respiratory issues, said Turetsky.

"We are hoping people will recognize the seriousness of climate change for northern regions and people living in them. Wildfire is going to play a more and more important role in shaping the north."

More From ScienceDaily

More Earth & Climate News

Featured Research

Mar. 31, 2015 — Soil organic matter, long thought to be a semi-permanent storehouse for ancient carbon, may be much more vulnerable to climate change than previously thought. Scientists have found that the common ... full story

Mar. 31, 2015 — The ocean is a large reservoir of dissolved organic molecules, and many of these molecules are stable against microbial utilization for hundreds to thousands of years. They contain a similar amount ... full story

Mar. 31, 2015 — Using the assessment tool ForWarn, US Forest Service researchers can monitor the growth and development of vegetation that signals winter's end and the awakening of a new growing season. Now these ... full story

Mar. 31, 2015 — Geoscientists have revealed information about how continents were generated on Earth more than 2.5 billion years ago -- and how those processes have continued within the last 70 million years to ... full story

Mar. 31, 2015 — Until now electric fences and trenches have proved to be the most effective way of protecting farms and villages from night time raids by hungry elephants. But researchers think they may have come up ... full story

Mar. 31, 2015 — The volcanologist Stephen Self, an expert on super-eruptions, was the first modern-day scientist to visit Tambora in Indonesia, the site of the largest volcanic eruption in 1,000 years. On the 200th ... full story

Mar. 31, 2015 — Researchers have detected a human fingerprint deep in the Borneo rainforest in Southeast Asia. Cold winds blowing from the north carry industrial pollutants from East Asia to the equator, with ... full story

Mar. 31, 2015 — Landfills can make a profit from all their rotting waste and a new patent explains exactly how to make the most out of the stinky garbage sites. Decomposing trash produces methane, a landfill gas ... full story

Mar. 31, 2015 — As the five-year anniversary of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig approaches, a new report looks at how twenty species of wildlife are faring in the aftermath of the ... full story

Mar. 31, 2015 — Accurately anticipating an approaching typhoon's destructive force makes all the difference in advance preparations and as a consequence, the cost in lives. But over the decades, climate scientists ... full story

Related Stories

Nov. 30, 2011 — As the Arctic warms, greenhouse gases will be released from thawing permafrost faster and at significantly higher levels than previous estimates, according to a survey of international experts. ... full story

July 27, 2011 — In 2007 the largest recorded tundra fire in the circumpolar arctic released approximately as much carbon into the atmosphere as the tundra has stored in the previous 50 years, say scientists. The ... full story

Feb. 18, 2011 — Alaskan forests used to be important players in Mother Nature's game plan for regulating carbon dioxide levels in the air. It's elementary earth science: Trees take up carbon dioxide and ... full story

May 4, 2010 — European researchers have launched a soil atlas of the world's northernmost regions, where more than half the carbon present in Earth's soils is stored. Although there has been much focus ... full story

ScienceDaily features breaking news and videos about the latest discoveries in health, technology, the environment, and more -- from major news services and leading universities, scientific journals, and research organizations.